Parts 1 - The Compleat Botanica

the professional advice, pregnancy alert, and legally restricted items might be added to round out
our sample filter for medicinal roots.
Filters also retain the sorting order, the column layout, and the column widths of the resulting specimen list. Sorting
order is defined by simply clicking on a column header: click once for an alphabetical sort, click again for the reverse
order, and click a third time to remove the sort criteria. Columns can be rearranged by clicking and dragging a column
header to the left or to the right. Column widths can be adjusted by simply clicking the right-hand edge of a column
header and dragging it to the desired width.
Categories
Categories define the set of standard possibilities for each item in the specimen list. The list of categories is fully
customizable so that you can supplement each set of possibilities to include your own definitions and organizational
rules. The software when it's first installed comes with a good set of categorical entries for each of the 90 possible
items. As you first begin collecting and recording your plant-related data you'll want to use the standard categories that
are supplied. As you encounter exceptions to the rule, non-conforming specimen, and other hard to classify plants, you
can enter free-form descriptions in the applicable data area. Free-form data entry makes it easy to describe things when
you don't yet know exactly how to classify what you have. At a later time you can develop categorical entries to match
the free-form entries that you've created.
Templates
HTML templates are used in the publication process, in the abstract view and in the gateway view. In each case, a
template is a standard HTML document with special embedded replacement tags. These replacement tags are used by
the software to merge your specimen data with the template to produce a new browser-compatible document.
Two types of templates are provided: detailed pages and summary tables. Detailed page templates are used for the data
of just a single specimen record. Their counterpart, summary table templates, are used for the data of a set of specimen
records -- usually this set of records is the collection defined by the currently selected filter.
Advanced users who understand HTML can produce their own templates using any standard web page editor.
Style sheets
Each HTML document created by the software references one or more style sheets. A style sheet describes how the
document is to be displayed in the Web browser, for instance which font face and font size should be used, which colors
should be used, or what type of borders should be applied. Eight different types of style sheets are used by the software
to produce every type of document from formal to garish, from plain to fancy, from simple to pizzazz.
The types of style sheets available include: color schemes, font styles, point sizes, logos, banner backgrounds, banner
borders, table backgrounds, and table borders.
Advanced users can create their own customized style sheets for use by the software.